Brand Names

While my wife is busy swearing off various retailers and spending time figuring out ways to get grocery stores to pay her for purchasing their goods, I've been noticing some changes around our household.

For example, the other day I noticed that we had Softsoap Ultra Rich Shea Butter Creme bath wash in our toiletry closet. It was just sitting there in its smooth, artwork covered packaging with those little colored soap crystals inside. I picked it up and stared at it for a second, trying to figure out what it was.

You see, up until this point, I was unaware that you could buy bath wash that didn't say "equate" somewhere on the packaging. In fact, I thought "equate" was some sort of New American slang for "soap."

Likewise, I've recently found cookies in our cupboard by someone named Keebler and a medical product called Aleve. Where, oh where, have my Great Value and naproxen gone?

As it turns out, one of the upsides to the wifey's new coupon obsession is that she's forced to buy name brand products to get the good deals offered up by her coupons. My body is not sure how to react to this.

When I was a kid, my mom was also a connoisseur de coupons. But for whatever reason, she still ended up buying lots of products that came in white label packages that could have housed soap, cookies, or motor oil, depending on which end of the factory line they occupied.

Additionally, my mom would pickup on little deals when she went to the store. For example, if there were a few gallons of milk getting ready to go south, she'd pick one up, hoping that I'd use it up quickly on my morning mixing bowl full of cereal. And to this day, I have no idea who "Sweet Acidophilus" is. His name sounds like he might have been one of the Harlem Globtrotters, but in any case, I ended up drinking his milk on occasion due to its closeout price.

I love my mom, and I'm sure she saved us a fortune on various products while growing up. And honestly, it seems like as people approach 70 or 80 years of age, they start paying more attention to these kinds of deals anyway, so she was just ahead of the curve. I still don't completely understand hers or Erin's system, but as long as I'm eating real Oreos and not a Hydrox (or variant thereof), and cleaning up with Charmin and not generic recycled tree bark, I'm a happy man.

So Erin has managed multiple benefits with her new shopping habits, and we haven't yet had to embarrass the kids.